BUILDING AND MANIPULATING 3-DIMENSIONAL AND LINKED 2-DIMENSIONAL STRUCTURES OF NANOPARTICLES USING SCANNING FORCE MICROSCOPY

Manipulation of nanoparticles with the scanning force microscope (SFM) has been limited until now to clearing areas on a surface or to movin g single particles sequentially to create two-dimensional patterns. Th e research reported here uses a previously described setup for nanoman ipulation with the SFM to (i) build a simple three-dimensional pyramid al structure by pushing a; nanoparticle on top of two others and (ii) rotate and translate a linked two-particle structure. The experiments are conducted in air and at room temperature with gold nanoparticles d eposited on silicon previously coated with a silane layer.